William Blum: The Anti-Empire Report, Jan 8 2013

Where have
you gone, Joe
DiMaggio?"France no longer
recognizes its children," lamented Guillaume Roquette in an
editorial in the Figaroweekly magazine in Paris. "How
can the country of Victor Hugo, secularism and family
reunions produce jihadists capable of attacking a kosher
grocery store?"[1]

I ask: How can the country of Henry
David Thoreau, separation of church and state, and family
Thanksgiving dinners produce American super-nationalists
capable of firing missiles into Muslim family reunions in
Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somalia?

Does America
recognize its children? Indeed, it honors them.
Constantly.

A French state prosecutor stated that "A
network of French Islamists behind a grenade attack on a
kosher market outside Paris last month also planned to join
jihadists fighting in Syria." [2]

We can add these
worthies to the many other jihadists coming from all over to
fight in Syria for regime change, waving al-Qaeda flags
("There is no god but God"), carrying out suicide attacks,
exploding car bombs, and singling out Christians for
extermination (for not supporting the overthrow of the
secular Syrian government.) These folks are not the first
ones you would think of as allies in a struggle for the
proverbial freedom and democracy. Yet America's children are
on the same side, with the same goal of overthrowing Syrian
president Bashir Assad.

So how do America's leaders
explain and justify this?

"Not everybody who's
participating on the ground in fighting Assad are people who
we are comfortable with," President Obama sad in an
interview in December. "There are some who, I think, have
adopted an extremist agenda, an anti-U.S. agenda, and we are
going to make clear to distinguish between those elements."
[3]

In an earlier speech, Secretary of State Clinton
acknowledged the scope of the threat from such movements. "A
year of democratic transition was never going to drain away
reservoirs of radicalism built up through decades of
dictatorship," she said. "As we've learned from the
beginning, there are extremists who seek to exploit periods
of instability and hijack these democratic transitions."[4]

"Extremist" ... "radicalism" ... No mention of
"terrorists" (which is what Assad calls them). No mention of
"jihadists" or foreign mercenaries. Or that they were
preparing their movement to overthrow the Syrian government
well before any government suppression of peaceful
protestors in March of 2011, which the Western media
consistently cites as the cause of the civil war. As far
back as 2007, Seymour Hersh was writing in The New
Yorker:

The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine
operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of
these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist
groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are
hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

Nor any
explanation of what it says about the mission of the Holy
Triumvirate (the United States, NATO and the European Union)
that they have been supplying these jihadist rebels with
funds, arms and training; with intelligence and
communication equipment; with diplomatic recognition(!);
later we'll probably find out about even more serious stuff.
But President Obama is simply "uncomfortable" with them,
because Assad, like Gaddafi of Libya, is a non-Triumvirate
Believer, while the Jihadists are the proverbial "enemy of
my enemy". How long before they turn their guns and
explosives upon Americans, as they did in
Libya?

Seeing is believing, and believing is
seeingIs it easier for a
believer to deal with a tragedy like the one in Newtown,
Connecticut than it is for an atheist? The human suffering
surrounding the ending of life forever for 20 small children
and six adults made me choke up again and again with each
news report. I didn't have the comfort that some religious
people might have had – that it was "God's will", that
there must be a "reason" for such profound agony, a good
reason, which you would understand if you could receive
God's infinite wisdom, if you could be enlightened enough to
see how it fit into God's Master Plan.

"How could God let
this happen?", asked a Fox News reporter of former
Republican governor of Arkansas and presidential candidate,
Mike Huckabee. "Well," replied Huckabee, "you know, it's an
interesting thing. We ask why there is violence in our
schools, but we've systematically removed God from our
schools. Should we be so surprised that schools would become
a place of carnage because we've made it a place where we
don't want to talk about eternity, life, what responsibility
means, accountability? That we're not just going to have to
be accountable to the police, if they catch us. But one day,
we will stand before a Holy God in judgment. If we don't
believe that, then we don't fear that."

So the former
governor is clearly implying that the tragedy was the lord's
retribution for not believing in, or not fearing, or just
ignoring His Master Plan. Believing this may well reduce the
grief Huckabee feels about what happened; perhaps even
provide him some satisfaction that those who were not
"accountable" are being punished. Whether he includes the
children in this group, or only their parents, teachers,
school officials and Democrats I don't know.

Local pastor
Jim Solomon recounted the story of a girl in the first grade
who, by playing dead, was the only one in her room to
survive: "She ran out of the school building covered from
head to toe with blood and the first thing she said to her
mom was, 'Mommy, I'm OK but all my friends are dead'." This
child was spared, said the pastor, "by God's grace".
[5]

Ah yes, God's grace. Do I need to ask the obvious
question?

It may be relevant to recall that the fellow who
slaughtered 87 young people in Norway last year was a
fundamentalist Christian.

"With or without religion, good
people will do good things and bad people will do bad
things. But for good people to do bad things — that takes
religion." - Steven Weinberg, Nobel Prize-winning
physicist

"Guns don't kill people. People kill
people."

How true. And nuclear bombs don't kill people.
Government leaders who decide to use nuclear bombs kill
people. So why have any bans on nuclear bombs? Get one for
each member of the family; well, for those over 16 at
least.

The crazed and the disturbed will always walk
amongst us. What we must do is strive to deny them the
facile ability to engage in mass murder. Everything else
being equal, if the Connecticut killer's mother didn't have
an arsenal of guns at home, including an assault weapon, the
story would probably have been a very different one. Ah, but
I hear you asking – on the left and on the right – so
you wanna let the government have all the guns and the
people nothing to defend themselves with? To which I reply:
Do you really think the people could hold their own in an
armed battle with the police and the military? Mass
suicide.

In the past decade various important rights and
freedoms of Americans have been seriously curtailed by the
Bush and Obama administrations. Did the 300 million guns in
private hands prevent any of this from happening? No. And
the rights and the freedoms were taken away much more by
pieces of paper than guns.

I'd be in favor of eliminating
all guns except for some law enforcement purposes. But if
that is not feasible, the goal should be to have as few guns
in circulation as possible. Or just ban ammunition, which
would be a lot easier and probably even more effective. It
would be a good start toward our cherished national goal of
becoming a civilized society.

The death of Osama
bin Laden. What does it profit a
country?The books and the
films are coming out. The subject is a sure winner. The
American tracking down and execution of Osama bin Laden in
May of 2011. Has there ever been a better example of Good
triumphing over Evil? Of Yankee courage and cleverness? "The
bin Laden operation was a landmark achievement by our
country, by our military, by our Intelligence Community, and
by our Agency," said the acting Director of the CIA, Michael
Morell. [6]

But even if everything the government has
told us about the operation is true ... How important was it
really? What did it change in Washington's glorious War on
Terror? American taxpayers are not spending a penny less on
the bloody spectacle. American soldiers still die in
Afghanistan as before. American drones still bring extreme
anxiety, death and destruction to children and parents in
the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa. Guantánamo still
holds numerous damned souls who wonder why they are there as
they bang their head against a brick wall.

Anti-American
terrorists are still being regularly created as a result of
US anti-terrorist operations. (Even the way bin Laden was
"buried" increased the hatred.) It's a mass-production
terrorist assembly line working three shifts even if the bin
Laden model has been discontinued. If only one in 10,000 of
the world's 1.6 billion Muslims is moved to want to attack
the US because of Washington's repeated outrages against
Muslims, the United States will have created a pool of
160,000 Muslims devoted to seeking revenge against
Americans.

"Remember when the United States had a drug
problem and then we declared a War on Drugs, and now you
can't buy drugs anymore? The War on Terrorism will be just
like that," declared author David Rees in 2008. [7]

The
fear mongering remains as is; airport security has not
gotten any less stupid, embarrassing, or destructive of
civil liberties than before, only worse. "Will that be
frisked or naked pictures with your airline ticket, sir?"
The No-Fly list grows bigger with each passing day, listing
people who are too guilty to fly, but too innocent to charge
with anything.

Wherever you go — "If you see something,
say something!"

People are entrapped as much as ever,
charged with some form of terrorism (or "terrorism"), staged
and financed by government agents, put away for terribly
long periods. The State Department puts a country on its
terrorist list, then the FBI persecutes Americans for
helping someone in that country, perhaps no more than
medical aid.

And surveillance of Americans ... the science
fiction methods are expanded without end ... no escape from
Fortress America. Protestors in America are monitored and
harassed and recorded as much as before; witness the recent
revelations concerning the FBI/Homeland Security/et al and
the Occupy Movement. The Patriot Act is still the law of the
land, now joined by the National Defense Authorization Act
which makes it easier than ever to hold people in indefinite
detention, for any reason, or no reason, including American
citizens. And now we have the president's clandestine "kill
list". [8] Could it be any worse if bin Laden were still
alive?

Followed
immediately by NBC-TV commentator Carson Daly
declaring that we have to honor our brave soldiers.

I'm
surprised that he didn't also mention honoring
God.

Toshiba sponsored the giant glass ball which rose up
to the top at midnight.

Viewers had the name "Toshiba"
flashed in their face a hundred times during the evening in
all kinds of ways.

Imagine that John Lennon had called
upon us to "Imagine there's no Toshiba".

Without Toshiba
would there not have been a New Years Eve?

Stuck in 2012
forever?

Imagine.

"Summer, 1969: I sit next
to Fidel Castro as he watches on the University of Havana's
color TV the astronauts landing on the moon. At times he
asks me to render certain idioms. He watches with
fascination. The program had begun with 'TANG: THE BREAKFAST
FOOD PRESENTS ... THE MOON LANDING.'

"And without Tang,"
Castro asks, "would there have been no moon landing?"

–
Saul Landau, author of numerous books and films on
Cuba

One way to look at
itCapitalism can be seen
in historical evolutionary terms, independent of any moral
point of view or judgement. Broadly speaking, the
organization of mankind's societies has evolved from slavery
to feudalism to capitalism. And it's now time for the next
step: socialism.

Socialism or communism have always been
given just one chance to work, if that much, while
capitalism has been given numerous chances to do so
following its perennial fiascos. Ralph Nader has observed:
"Capitalism will never fail because socialism will always be
there to bail it out."

Capitalism gave rise to some very
important innovations, such as mass production and
distribution, and many technological advances. But now, and
for some time past, the system has caused much more harm
than good. It's eating its young. And our environment. We
can take the advances instituted by capitalism for the
purpose of profit and use them to create a society based on
putting people before profit. Just
imagine.

Notes[1]Washington
Post, October 21, 2012

[2] Associated Press,
October 11, 2012

[3]Washington Post, December 11,
2012

[4]Washington Post, October 15, 2012

[5]Huffington Post, December 17, 2012

[6]Washington Post, December 22, 2012

[7]In his
book Get Your War On

[8]New York Times, May
29, 2012

–

William Blum is the author
of:

• Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions
Since World War 2• Rogue State: A Guide to the
World's Only Superpower• West-Bloc Dissident: A
Cold War Memoir• Freeing the World to Death:
Essays on the American Empire

Among his other blessings, Pope Francis has been a gift to the world of marketing studies. There can be few other examples where a leader has transformed the perception of an enterprise so thoroughly, but without making any discernible change to its core principles. More>>

ALSO:

How could Iran continue to be expected to do all the military heavy lifting in the battle against Islamic State, while still being economically sanctioned and isolated for the threat that Teheran allegedly poses to the region? More>>

Hi and welcome to the 56th edition of Werewolf, in which our cover story this month analyses the remarkable change of global public opinion towards the Papacy that Pope Francis has wrought - especially so, given the depths of unpopularity to which the Vatican had sunk during the reign of his predecessor… More>>

Greece, as the cradle of democracy, is getting no brownie points for actually practicing it. The decision by the Greek government to go back to the people for a mandate for the bailout terms being proposed by the Eurozone seems entirely appropriate. More>>